All good points above. Yes, statewide ARES pushing for it. Guessing the desire is to have private emcomms over the ham freqs so things like names, addresses, etc that you wouldn't want in the clear to be exposed. Seems like there ought to be reasonable exceptions allowing encrypted comms, but the amateurs as a whole don't want that as it can bring some unwanted regs by big brother into play...

Have a great Independence Day, guys....